That ground cover really exploded with color this year after the snow last weekend.
Sunset Spot
My favorite afternoon sitting spot has been in need of re-finishing for a few years. This is were I sit and watch the sunsets and cars going by when I’m too tired to do anything else at the end of a nice summer day. I finally started getting around to it over the past month, and the front porch glider is now nicely done after a decade of weathering and sun fading left it looking pretty shabby:
It took a total of around 15 hours of work over the past month to get this done right. After disassembly, 23 separate pieces of wood needed sanded, stained and re-done with three coats of spar urethane. The wood was somewhat damaged from uneven fading and discoloration due to how the original finish weathered over the years. I suspect it will last a bit longer than 10 years this time around.
Aquatics Update
The Aquatics hobby is ramping up with spring pond work and a new feeder tank in the basement coming this year. Pond needs re-lined. I was a bit disappointed we did not get more than one year out of the first liner in PondV3, but it was sort of expected. And it only took a year to find out 20 gallons is not enough to feed these guys live food as much as I (and certainly they!) would like:
At least the main tank is doing quite well. Notice the big guy peering out from the top left corner. Looks like the filter schedule on this one should settle into running for about 5 months. Despite still pushing good flow after a 6-month run last cycle, that appeared to be a bit too long, based on upwardly trending water nitrate levels. That Marineland C360 cannister has turned out to be a great choice for this tank.
Another Big Day for Francie!
It’s official: Plymouth State University, New Hampshire. We had a little signing ceremony for her and a couple of other Frederick High athletes yesterday. I’m sure there’s probably still just a wee bit more paperwork left to do at this point…
Link to a few more pics and the pre-Prom dress-up shots.
Baby got New Shoes
And new feet as well I suppose, depending on how the analogy works for the wheels. It’s running 235/40 18s. That’s pretty close to the most tire it’ll fit the same size on all 4 corners with the Ohlins suspension. The M models and some Sportline options come with bigger rears, but I like to be able to rotate, because the rears definitely do wear ALOT faster, even with the electronic nannys engaged.
They are the cheapest, not stupid-looking wheel/tire combo I could find at this size – cast, all-season. Nuthin’ Fancy – from the Skynyrd album of that name:
Panama 2016
Just finished organizing the pics from the Girl’s trip to Panama last December for your viewing pleasure. There are some good shots of Michelle’s extended family at the bottom. It’s pretty obvious how so many guys like me ended up finding their wives down there…
Carol 'n Ron 2016
We don’t get much in the way of visitors around here, so it was especially nice spending time with Carol ‘n Ron when they came to visit last August. I only just finished posting up the pics saved from their camera before they returned to PA. One in particular was a rare time-capsule view of Sis and me in Rocky Mountain National Park:
The Emperor Wears No Clothes
Fortunately I didn’t get around to reading this until later in life:
The Emperor Wears No Clothes, a book about the history of Hemp in the U.S.A.
It’s fortunate from my perspective, because learning I’d been systematically lied to by any number of influential people in my life including teachers, politicians, medical practitioners and indeed the government establishment itself, probably would have resulted at some point in me being incarcerated in the miserable mess of a prison system sitting beneath what we call justice in this country today.
This blog post is just my little better-late-than-never contribution to help preserve Jack’s legacy. Jack Herer was obviously a great visionary with the nads to go up against hopeless odds for what he believed was true and right. As long as I’m around, these pages will at least represent a timely token gesture towards him on my part, as we enter the Trumpomania era. Hell, Trump’s been doing the Dance Naked since well before the inauguration. So it appears once again, common sense, truth and justice will be defined by avaricious businessmen with little regard for what is truly right or valuable.
It should be interesting to see the new administration’s upcoming clashes with the will of the people in this country. Perhaps that will has already in many respects, been usurped by the election itself. Politics aside, the relatively few studies sneaking through over the past couple of decades have shown the drug’s therapeutic benefits pretty conclusively. With climate change knocking hard on the door and cannabis legalization already in place in a majority of states and many more in the making, we got some ‘splaining to do behind Federal DOE, DEA and FBI doors. DEA began the long, uphill backpedal. Amazing.
I used to go about the workplace(s) making small talk that inevitably touched on business and politics. One of my favorite quips was “I hate Corporate America almost as much as I hate The Government.” Now I’m not so sure those two things are all that much separate and distinct entities. Anything supporting the Federal Cannabis Ban topic in all it’s misinformed stupidity is simply morally indefensible. Despite still being at it to this day, the days where Corporate America enriches itself through Government market control at the expense of it’s citizens’ general welfare are numbered. Anyone remember “pharma bro?” Nobody will use Insys’ garbage if they can can get the real, pure, unadulterated product as nature intended from a plant they can grow themselves quite easily.
The brazen SOB’s at GW Pharma over in the UK even have the gall to attempt market-cornering tactics with legislative moves in states that are not presently even exploring MMJ initiatives. It is anathema to the most fundamental principles on which our free-markets are supposed to be based. I can’t wait to witness the fall of Big Pharma. Unfortunately, it will probably be preceded by implosion of the entire healthcare system as we know it today.
People just wanting to feel good and relieve pain should not need to mortgage their futures to drug companies for that purpose.
Next Monster PC
I typically spend more time playing with my little home enterprise data center over the winter when weather precludes other activities. This past winter has seen more system work than usual due to a number of factors, mostly hard drive breakage. The legacy SCSI storage subsystems are almost gone now, with only 1 remaining. They are just too finicky and difficult to maintain these days. The old PC’s represent the bottom tier of our hierarchical storage system. One of them (4 presently in rotation) gets an incremental data backup from the online NAS once every 1, 2, 3 or 4 months, so the oldest copy will always be between 3 and 4-months old. My data preservation scheme will be near perfect if I ever remember to work in an offsite 6-month tape cycle with Carolyn.
I was saving the last system needing attention for the Debian 9 release, but as usual they are taking their damn good old time with it. With spring here now, I decided to go ahead and put the RC2 release on it after getting tired of waiting. This guy has been refreshed with a new combo consisting of 2 Raid5’s for the root and data file-systems. An SSD has tmp and swap on it. The 10-year old Abit IP-35 Core2-Quad Intel machine ends up with 9 drives, 8 gigs of RAM and no SCSI in it this time around. Despite it’s age, it should nevertheless run very well as configured.
The coolest thing about this particular PC is the video subsystem, partially shown in the 1st pic above. That low-profile Nvidia card started life in an HP Pavilion 11 years ago. It was a premium upgrade for the Pavilion I ordered from HP at the time. It’s fan went bad at some point, but fortunately it got noisy before failing completely, so I was able to save the card. It’s been re-animated in the IP-35 with a cobbed-up dual fan setup as shown. The only new part needed for this build was an additional 4-port SATA controller.
International Politics and U.S. Foreign Policy 101
Just to clarify this post was stupid.
Francie's Volleyball Aspirations
… Appear to be going well. Michelle and her spent the better part of the last three days at the big Crossroads volleyball tournament in Denver. Ballistic 18s were in the overall top echelon of contenders, winning 5 out of 7 matches against their opponents. Here’s a link to the Senior Highlights video. Next up is a trip to Plymouth, New Hapshire to see if she wants to accept a scholarship they are offering her there.
2500 Air-Dam Project Complete
About a year-and-a-half ago I took a little cross-country trip to visit the folks back east. Beforehand, I decided to use the upcoming opportunity to test a hypothesis for aerodynamics affecting fuel mileage on the ’07 Dodge truck. Lifted pickups are the worst for fuel mileage, but I managed to keep this one averaging around the stock MPG level (18) with a tune and some other minor-to-major mods including a built trans with a tighter torque converter.
But there’s not much you can do about the lift, or so it would seem. Higher basically equals more drag from an aerodynamic perspective. Then I got to thinking about the aerodynamics and envisioned an air dam extending down from the front bumper. The truck is a road machine intended for towing trailers and hauling stuff, almost never going off the pavement anyway, so this is doable.
The prototype I created did well on the trip, with only a couple of minor issues needing corrected before rebuilding it to final spec. The front braces made from aluminum snapped right off the first time I bumped something hard enough. Steve, if you’re listening, you probably already found those laying alongside your driveway a year ago last fall. They are now made of similarly-sized strips of black delrin, an engineering thermoplastic used in precision parts requiring stiffness and dimensional stability. The skin was glued to the frame before, mostly for expediency’s sake, but now it is fitted separately with screws enabling easier maintenance if it ever needs repaired or replaced. I also added a little finishing touch by flaring the bottom corners out a few inches to give it a more appealing, streamlined look.
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So after like 50 hours of work and around $200 worth of materials, was it worth it? To me – yes, absolutely! The biggest and unexpected benefit from it is noise reduction. Apparently alot of the interior noise developed at highway speed comes from turbulence created by air moving underneath. Can’t say exactly how much without before/after decibel readings, but the cabin is noticeably quieter inside now. And it’s good for a solid +1 MPG. Lifted pickups with big tires are notoriously poor fuel mileage machines, so every little bit helps. It still needs the seam where it attaches finish smoothed and that whole bottom front plastic area coated to match.
685 Miles Range – 1 Tank
You are not going to believe this, so I took a picture to prove it;
With the meter running at 36.7MPG, Vehicle Info screen on the control console showed a range of 685 miles immediately after fill-up, upon re-setting the display. An actual 601.5 on the tank ain’t bad either. Amazing, really – for a car that runs low 13’s in the quarter on street tires.
They Did It!
Francie’s volleyball team got the job done last weekend at their Power-2 tournament in the Springs. It was a close match with the other really good team in attendance that day, but they came out on top and clearly dominated the rest.
All-Time Record High
Denver set a new all-time record high temperature for February yesterday: 81F in Aurora, where Buckley Air Force Base is located.
Looking Ahead to 2017
The big thing this year will be Francie graduating from high school. Here is a link to all her grad pics and my favorite:
I’m also close to complete posting a now total of 4 pages worth of photos (>300) collected from Mom’s camera during her visits over the years. Check back again soon to see the rest of them…
Club tournament volleyball play starts this month and we are still hopeful the right college coach will discover a new star player for their team.
Phoebe is looking for a new job, and Michelle is doing the Redneck thing.
Best wishes to everyone in 2017!